The Headmaster’s Wager

by Vincent Lam (Hogarth)

Chen, the protagonist of this novel set during the Vietnam War, is a Chinese immigrant who heads the most prestigious English-language school in Saigon, the eponymous Percival Chen English Academy. Chen is a shrewd businessman and an avid gambler. Despite years of living in Vietnam, he has remained culturally and politically aloof, but this position becomes untenable as war forces him to trade on new and unexpected alliances to insure the safety of his son. Lam, a Canadian whose family lived for a time in Vietnam’s community of Chinese expatriates, is sensitive to complexities of allegiance, to the impossibility of being impartial, and to the way that, in war, every gambit, no matter how well calculated, entails loss. “Never wager more than you can afford to lose,” Chen is admonished at the table. “That’s how you’ll come out ahead in the end.” ♦

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